Guild Ball: Miner's Minor Guild Official Release Date

In a shocking update from Steamforged Games this morning, the Minor guild for the Engineer's, the Miner's are going to be made available for pre-orders on February 15th, 2019 and will be released on March 1st, 2019.  That is 2 weeks before the release of the Cook's Minor Guild that was announced a few weeks ago.

Also in a slight twist, the Miner's will not be made in plastic like all the previous Minor Guilds, nor come in a fancy box, due to the size of some of the models, SFG elected to cast the Miner's in resin and they will be packaged in legacy boxes.  I am a little disappointed in this for a few reasons:
1. The plastic models were easier for a new player to purchase and place on the table to get started with a game (SFG original intentions for going to plastic)
2. Along the same lines as #1 above, the resin models will need to be assembled.
3. No consistency in material across their lines.

At the same time with this announcement, SFG announced a new way for local gaming stores to order with them and it will be called SFG Direct.  It looks like they are planning on taking out the middle man (the distributors).  I know Privateer Press has moved to this route for older models, but it looks like SFG is moving towards this direction for all orders or at least their resin models.  I am not sure how this will play out for the lgs' here in the States in terms of shipping costs.  Usually when they place their orders through a distributor, they have items from multiple manufacturers that they can order from, now they will have to do multiple orders.

We shall wait and see what happens,,,,